Models Available for Download

Well, that's it LOAF, all this thinking about Red Vs Blue made me feel all green. Here's some Rapier G's (And an older Rapier, too!) All gussey'd up in their Concordia Greens.

I can't seem to upload the 4096x3072 version right now.

I kind of imagine this as the cover for "F-44 Rapier II's in ACTION"

Anyhoo, enjoy.
 

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Hi :)

:) been trying to down load the models in scifimesh but It's no allowing me although I have an account in scifimesh. any alternate sites where I can get this models ? oh and I love your models grate work man cheers :D
 
You can probably still look forward to seeing some of these ships up close (scarily close, and 2200 KM long, for some of them...) In WCSAGA, those guys are absolutely working their butts off to bring the WC community an amazing story and game, you will NOT be disappointed.

I was going back to write an update about the second pack and saw this -- 2200 km sounds like it's a bit long for even the Kilrathi dreadnought. :)
 
Are all those white spaces on the Kilrathi Dreadnaught actual windows? Cause whenever I think I have a sense of scale with these WC capital ships, I'll see some different fan art or some other pictures that just throw me off. In this picture, the Dreadnaught looks way bigger than I thought was supposed to be.
 
Are all those white spaces on the Kilrathi Dreadnaught actual windows? Cause whenever I think I have a sense of scale with these WC capital ships, I'll see some different fan art or some other pictures that just throw me off. In this picture, the Dreadnaught looks way bigger than I thought was supposed to be.

The KDR is scaled to 2200 KM, but you're right, the windows were too close together. I emailed LOAF an updated texture with wider spaced windows (larger decks for Kilrathi and for armor plating) for all those who want it, and a picture for scale.

Incedentally, I think we now have a submission for the starship scale website!
 

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That's just plain crazy! Even at 22KM Concordia can fit inside the hangar bay!

And at 2200KM the Connie just disappears. I don't buy it, sorry. Especially given the size of the victory during it's Kamikaze run!

*Initiate Cannonicity Flame-War* :D

Previous version was sized for 2200 M.

Maybe somebody could time themselves doing a flypast in game, and get the in-game model size...
 

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This was a big argument once upon a time, but the False Colors novel confirmed that it's supposed to be 22 kilometers -- the story wouldn't make any sense, otherwise (ships in Wing Commander III aren't really scaled to each other exactly - there's three levels, fighter, capital ship and big capital ship... so you can compare any two fighters or any two capships or the Behemoth and the H'varr Kann).
 
So, Novel trumps cutscene as far as cannon?
 

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Well, yes -- the dreadnoughts being huge is a key plot point in the novel.

Victory Streak also says 22,000 kilometers.
 
Also, the cutscenes aren't in agreement with each other :). The scene in the hangar makes the dreadnought much smaller than 22 KM, but the Victory suicide run scene (which was used here as evidence to the contrary :p ) makes the dreadnought much bigger than 2200 metres. The Victory is 700 metres long, and when it's crashing, it's clearly much, much less than 1/3rd the length of the dreadnought.
 
Yes -- add to that the fact that lengths are problematic in Wing Commander in general (any Wing Commander III fighter will also fail the 'compared to a person!' test) and the fact that deciding that the dreadnought should be - specifically - 2,200 meters long is entirely arbitrary (hey, this has the same number of twos as the printed length, lets use that!).
 
So it looks like Victory Streak *meant* 22,000 meters. Is this the length that seems the most reasonable to us as a group?
 
So it looks like Victory Streak *meant* 22,000 meters. Is this the length that seems the most reasonable to us as a group?

Well, the question we should be asking ourselves is: why wouldn't Victory Streak mean what it says in the first place?

To be clear, I have no problem criticizing Wing Commander's length figures in general: they're all over the map between games, none of them pass the 'as seen in FMV' test and with the exception of Prophecy (which still doesn't match straight ship speeds) they don't correspond with their in-game sizes. What I do not understand is why people take issue with only this particular ship and why they have decided to accepd such an unusual solution to it.

Consider that the 2,200 meter number has exactly the same set of problems, plus one: it does not pass the 'measured in FMV' test, it doesn't compare correctly in the game... and you add to the issue that it isn't been stated anywhere. What's the single benefit to using it? This, and only this: it makes it seem like the original number was a typo.

Where does the eagerness to believe that the dreadnought isn't really big (but that all other ships are) come from? Victory Streak has been redesigned and updated half a dozen times since its original printing, including two major updates which fixed both incorrect ship specifications and incredibly minor continuity problems (the 3DO version, which fixes ship specifications to match their finished numbers and the Kilrathi Saga version, which goes so far as to change an ace's name to avoid a slight contradiction with a reference in Freedom Flight).

Here's backstory: deciding that the dreadnought is really 2,200 meters long comes from the early Wing Commander Aces club stories, when the club 'founders' fancied themselves grand arbitors of what was and was not "realistic". They also killed Colonel Blair (not a realistic character!) and changed the marine corps into part-parcel-In the name of realism!In the name of realism!and-proper-noun Mechwarrior dealies (soldiers, in space? Bah, only giant robots are realistic!). In the name of realism! We could complain about these things all day, but they're dead and we aren't. Nevertheless, I have no idea why this particular oddity has survived all these years while the others have (thankfully, thankfully) died their deserved death.

At the end of the day, Andrew Keith found the 22,000 meter dreadnought in Victory Streak and made it the centerpiece of that last great Baen novel... a magically smaller ship wouldn't work the same way, and that's just about as argument-ending as you can get in this case. We need to start thinking beyond 'this number doesn't feel right, it must be wrong'. Lets consider why it was chosen in the first place... to be incredibly imposing! Lets argue about what they could be used for (that's a lot of empty space - is it a troopship? Full of munitions? Thousands of fighters? What?).

Ultimately, I think the real shame is that the Saga project is using the Aces Club number instead of showing us the single thing that FreeSpace is supposed to be good for... really, really big capital ships.
 
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